Matthew 14: 22-33; Luke 9: 28-36

Into the discomfort zone

Dear friends,  Adrian Rogers tells about the man who bragged that he had cut off the tail of a man-eating lion with his pocket knife. Asked why he hadn’t cut off the lion’s head, the man replied: “Someone had already done that.”  The man sounds like a mighty warrior at first, but after we are told the lion’s head had already been taken off, he sounded more like a weasel, or a hyena.  There is no glory in cutting an animal’s tail off when someone else has made off with the head.  In the end it wasn’t much of an uncomfortable situation for him.  Friends, we all have uncomfortable situations we must enter if we want to do the things we think we should pursue in life.  Not too long ago I decided I wanted to take some rowing lessons at Lake Natoma.  This required me to jump in the lake full of cold snowmelt in April to prove I could swim. If you ever want a situation where you forget you can swim, that would be it. I am sure you have similar stories.  In our verses of the week and our Bible passage today we see disciples in two very uncomfortable situations. In Luke they are on the mountain. In Matthew they are on the lake.  In most situations they say Jesus in a different way than they usually saw Him, not as the flesh and blood man they had grown comfortable with.  In Matthew Jesus comes toward them on the lake and they think he is an apparition.  In Luke they witness the transfiguration of Jesus where he appears before them in dazzling white garments.  They don’t what to make of it and it scares them.  Peter the emotional disciple makes the decision to walk toward Jesus on the water, but his faith is not strong enough, but at least he is willing to step into the discomfort zone.  Now we are not really sure what the disciples experienced or how things really happened, but it is clear that they found themselves outside of their comfort zone.

As I will have shared with you many years ago when I visited the U.S. for the first time I got involved with a strongly evangelical organization which required me to go speak to random people and try to convert them.  One time they sent me out onto Huntington Beach with some pamphlets.  That was slightly terrifying.  Because of that experience I try not to be rude to Jehovah’s witnesses and Mormon missionaries.  Around that same time one of the people of that organization took to Tijuana and at that time Tijuana was a very obvious place.  You know where California ended and Mexico began, the border was one more open then and it was easy to go back and forth.  You suddenly found yourself in this wall of slums built up against the border. For a teenager from tidy Holland who had not seen that much wealth but also no real poverty that was a transforming experience of chaos and misery that I am sure was responsible for setting me on a path for the future.  It was stepping into another discomfort zone.

When I finally started studying in the US about three years later and I was in seminary, I signed up to be an on-call nighttime chaplain at Parkland Memorial Hospital, the county hospital in Dallas where all the shootings and accidents arrive. I didn’t very long, but I remember wandering around the emergency room area knowing that a particular elevator shaft was the spot where President Kennedy had died.  The significance of that dark place, literally, weighed heavy.  A zone of discomfort.

Friends, in our faith and ministry we are bound to have to enter the discomfort zone.  The disciples had to.  Sometimes we feel completely out of sorts and out of place.  I imagine that for most of you the first time you came into this sanctuary and took your place in the pews, part of you wanted to just get up and leave.  You were entering the discomfort zone.  Maybe you didn’t know whether you couId feel comfortable with the music or the message or the greeting of perfect strangers.  I felt kind of that way when I came here and a whole congregation I did not know was voting whether they wanted me or not. This church in hosting another worshipping group from a totally different culture who were going through the birth pangs of a new congregation was entering the discomfort zone.   Even trying to deal with these miraculous Bible passages we have today may be extremely unsettling to some you.  It launches you into a discomfort zone.  “Can we take these passages seriously when we have trouble taking then literally,” you may be asking yourself.  But then is it interesting how the texts with that are hardest to take literally are the ones with the most symbolic power.  A week or so ago during our session retreat I asked our session members what they would change about themselves as a church leader if given the chance and also what it is they would like to accomplish. One member said:” I would to see one of our buildings turned a place where a homeless family could stay temporarily.  Talking about entering the discomfort zone! I can see the wheels turning already: what they burn the place down or leave the heaters on or have no insurance or use fake ids or bring in drugs? Don’t worry, t doesn’t mean it will happen.  Yet whatever we do in ministry at one point or another will lead us into the discomfort zone.  But it is nothing compared to the ultimate discomfort Jesus suffered on our behalf.  But this is the miraculous thing about Christian faith: it comforts and brings discomfort at the same time.  Thanks be to God.